Mythbusters: The Queens Boulevard Bike Lane Didn’t Do in Ben’s Best Deli
11:27 AM EDT on June 14, 2018
Jay Parker, the owner of Ben’s Best Deli, says a reduction in parking on Queens Boulevard put him out of business. But there are a dozen garages near the deli, some selling car storage for less than a side of health salad. Image via Google Maps
Jay Parker, the owner of Ben's Best in Rego Park, is going out of business, the latest casualty in the long attrition of Jewish delis that's claimed institutions as popular and venerated as the Carnegie Deli.
I learned to salivate at the sight of chopped liver at a young age, and I would love to head over, pay my respects, and wolf down some hot pastrami and pickles before Ben's Best is gone for good. But it's hard to muster much sympathy for Parker when he tells anyone who'll listen that he can't stay solvent because of the Queens Boulevard bike lane.
The line Parker has been peddling is that Ben's Best wasn't done in by the punishing margins, skyrocketing beef prices, and shrinking market for kosher meat that have wiped out so many other Jewish delis. Nope, it was the bike lane's fault.
It's a toxic message. The Queens Boulevard redesign has cut the number of pedestrian injuries in half, while cycling has more than doubled. No one has been killed while walking or biking on Queens Boulevard since DOT implemented the first redesigned segment in Woodside in 2015, an unprecedented safety streak on the former "Boulevard of Death."
The redesigned Queens Boulevard. Photo: NYC DOT
New York needs a lot more of these projects to make cycling safe enough for most people to give it a shot, and it's a myth that the local retail economy will suffer in the process.
Earlier research has proven that in general, bike lanes and other projects to make NYC streets less car-centric aren't harming storefront businesses. And in the specific case of Ben's Best, the argument that poor customer access was a decisive factor in its demise doesn't hold up.
Ben's Best launched in 1945, but the parking spaces that the bike lane replaced only date back to 2001, when DOT added a parking lane to slow down drivers who were killing people by the dozen on Queens Boulevard. Street changes don't explain its declining business -- the challenging economics of running a kosher deli in 2018 do.
In a sign that Parker was cutting corners before the bike lane appeared, Ben's Best, like the Carnegie Deli before it, was sued by workers for wage theft in 2015. The segment of Queens Boulevard near the deli wasn't redesigned until mid-2017.
Speaking to the Forward (h/t Bike Snob), Parker acknowledged that the customer base which used to sustain the deli just isn't there anymore:
Ben Fried started as a Streetsblog reporter in 2008 and led the site as editor-in-chief from 2010 to 2018. He lives in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, with his wife.
"I really would think that our mayor would be a little bit more active and speak with us, because he hasn't really made any time with riders. We're not the enemy. We just want better bus service."
Justin Sherwood and his lawyer will pocket $152,000 to settle his federal civil rights suit against the city and several officers who harassed him following his 311 calls.